Favorite Schools

Favorite Teams

Oregon schools should embrace this change for English language learners: Editorial Agenda 2014

ELL.JPG

In this 2006 file photo, first-graders in an English Language Learner class in Gresham take turns practicing sentence construction. Some school districts in Oregon have found ways to teach English quickly and thoroughly, while others have not. Oregon schools chief Rob Saxton wants to change the state's funding formula for ELL instruction.
(The Oregonian/ file)

In many Oregon schools, the formula for teaching English as a second language goes something like this:

Identify a student as an English language learner. Receive extra funding year after year because of that designation. Watch the student drop out of high school after failing to learn fluent English during two, five, even nine years in class.

Repeat.

Oregon schools chief Rob Saxton is ready to change that formula. The Legislature and Oregon Education Investment Board should follow his lead. In fact, Oregon should go further than Saxton's proposal if it wants to help more students escape the purgatory of partial fluency and find success in adulthood.

Under Oregon's current system for funding K-12 education, school districts get a fixed per-student amount and additional money for each student who is classified as low-income, special education or learning English as a second language.

The longer a student is classified as still learning English, the longer a school district gets paid. This creates a perverse incentive for districts to move at a leisurely pace on the whole academic-fluency thing and starve their ELL instructors of adequate resources. It also sets students up for failure: Rather than frontload the funding to help students gain academic fluency as quickly as possible, the state dribbles out the money in near-perpetuity.

Saxton proposes changing that dynamic. Under his plan, school districts would get the extra funding for a set number of years: seven years for students with the lowest levels of English fluency, and four years for students with moderate levels of fluency. If a student learns fast and no longer needs extra help, the school district still gets the money. And if that student earns a diploma, the district gets a $250 bonus.

State leaders of all political stripes have many good reasons to embrace this proposal. First, it's affordable: It redistributes about $46 million in existing funds, but it doesn't require new money. Second, it adds an important safeguard by requiring school districts to spend 90 percent of their English Language Learner (ELL) money on actual ELL students, which would limit schools' habit of raiding the ELL cookie jar for other needs.

Most important, the rationale for teaching English effectively and quickly is clear: Today, only about half of Oregon students classified as English language learners graduate from high school on time, compared with the state average of 69 percent. By contrast, students who exit their ELL programs before high school boast a graduation rate of nearly 76 percent, well above the state average.

Saxton's plan would benefit from one significant change: Seven years is still too long. Oregon should shorten the length of time that school districts receive extra ELL funding for a given student, while boosting the per-year amount. This would allow school districts to provide intensive help more quickly, using the same amount of money.

Gov. John Kitzhaber asked Saxton to come up with several effective, high-yield proposals for the next biennium. This ELL change is one of four. The other three are boosting early childhood education, doing more for low-performing schools and creating a financial incentive for high schools to keep freshmen on track to graduate. The ELL proposal could easily get lost in the shuffle.

It shouldn't. Oregon has known for years that it should do something different – very different – with its delivery of education for students learning English. Saxton's idea is an excellent place to start.